KABUL – Afghan President Ashraf Ghani renewed his dialogue offer to the Talibanon on Sunday, saying the militia is facing a major test – to choose whether they want peace or war.
“Peace is in the interests of both us and the Taliban,” Ghani said while addressing the opening of parliament after winter break. “Real peace cannot come from behind closed doors,” Tolo TV quoted him as saying.
His comments come a day after the Taliban refused to hold direct peace talks with the Afghan government, dealing a blow to international efforts to revive long-stalled negotiations aimed at ending the deadly 14-year insurgency.
The announcement, which comes as face-to-face talks were expected to start in Islamabad this week, stressed longstanding preconditions for dialogue, including the departure of foreign troops from Afghanistan.
The Taliban’s seemingly intractable position follows a string of military victories for the insurgent group after NATO formally ended its combat operations more than a year ago.
“We want to repeat our stance once again that until the occupation of foreign troops ends, until Taliban names are removed from international blacklists and until our detainees are released, talks will yield no results,” the group said in a statement.
However, Ghani said that it was not a civil war in Afghanistan, Afghans were all brothers, and it was “indeed imposed war”. He rejected allegations that the leadership lacks the will to fight insurgents and said that the cooperation between the security forces had improved in the past year.
“The enemy suffered major casualties in winter at the hands of forces fighting insurgents in provinces including, Baghlan and Ghazni. Afghanistan is the only country where Daesh is on the run and it will become a grave for them,” he said
On Afghanistan and Pakistan relations, he said that one of the factors of violence is that “Afghanistan and Pakistan have been in an undeclared war”. “Afghanistan and Pakistan are both suffering at the hands of terrorism, so we need to reach an agreement,” the Afghan president said.
